Video: Playing back the slideshow

Here we want to take a look at how we can modify some of our playback options. So let's close the Titles panel and then open up the Playback panel. Now one of the great new things with Lightroom 3 is how we add a soundtrack or audio files to our slideshows. So here we'll click on the Soundtrack option and what you can do is you can simply select the music by clicking on this button. This is no longer tied to your iTunes Library on the Mac operating system. So here we'll simply go to our music file. I'm going to select this mp3 and then click Choose.

Playing back the slideshow

Here we want to take a look at how we can modify some of our playback options.So let's close the Titles panel and then open up the Playback panel.Now one of the great new things with Lightroom 3 is how we add a soundtrack oraudio files to our slideshows.So here we'll click on the Soundtrack option and what you can do is you cansimply select the music by clicking on this button.This is no longer tied to your iTunes Library on the Mac operating system.So here we'll simply go to our music file.I'm going to select this mp3 and then click Choose.

What this will do is it will figure out the duration of this particular song.Here we have the song name.It's an mp3 file and what we can do is we can say, you know what, I want theslideshow, which I'm going to use of all of these photos,I want it to fit to the music.So I'll simply click on Fit to Music.What it will then do is modify the slide duration so that these slides willplay for an appropriate amount of time, so that they will go throughout theentirety of this full song.Now if we decide to change the Fade, let's say if we want a little bit of ashorter fade, a really quick fade, well now when we click Fit to Music, noticehow it modifies the slide duration here, so that the slides will last a longenough time, so again that it goes throughout the entirety of the song, and thisis really nice so that we can sync things up a little bit more effectively.

So just have a bit of fun playing with these controls, modify them and thenclick Fit to Music in order to get just the right mix here.All right, well what about Playback Screen?Well currently I have two monitors connected to my computer.Here you can see this is the target current monitor.This one's a little bit smaller, and this one's a little bit bigger.Well, if I want to change which monitor the slideshow will be played back on, Ican simply click on the monitor.Now once I do that, you notice that it's changing the overall layout.

That's one of the reasons why I wanted to leave these guides on, because inthis case, let's say on this layout it might be nice to have a little bit of abigger photograph here so it takes up much more space, and I can increase theheight there and then change the overall position, because on this particularmonitor I need more image.Now if I want to change this back, simply click back to the other monitor andhere we can also make changes in regards to how we're going to display the photoon this particular monitor.Another thing that you can do is blank out other screens.

So if you have two monitors and if you want to play the slideshow here and youdon't want anyone to be distracted by your other monitor, you can simply blankthat out, and this works especially well if you have a laptop and if you'reprojecting with a projector.Here you can define or determine where you want to have thisparticular slideshow be shown.All right, let's go ahead and scroll down just a bit and focus on just a few more options.We've already started to explore how we can work with slide duration.What's interesting about this is we can simply modify these sliders and we canalso change the fade color and typically, what you want to do is choosesomething that makes sense with your slideshow.

Well here, what we have is black, and this will work really well.So if we click on black, that fade then will feed through that black color.Again just make sure to choose something, which fits the overall context of yourslideshow, the backdrop and the images.Another option is for Random Ordering.In this case, it will randomize your images.Now you may be thinking, well why would you ever want to do that?Because typically you want to control the narrative of a slideshow, you want tolead someone through your photographs.Well yes that's definitely true.

Yet in other situations, let's say you photograph a wedding, and you want toquickly put up some images for all the guests to enjoy.Well in those cases if you turn on Random Order it might be a nice touch,because a slideshow which might only last five minutes will all of asudden seem fresh and new.It will feel like there are more images because it's randomly selectingdifferent files in order to display.Now we also have the option to repeat the slideshow and again this can behelpful if you wanted to go again and again.

Now in other situations you may find that repeating it is going to be overkill,so you may need to turn that option off.All right, well the last thing you want to turn on is Prepare Previews in Advance.This way there won't be any lag time in regards to displaying and viewing the photographs.All right, well now that we've dialed in all of these different options,let's go ahead and explore how we can export the slideshow, so that otherpeople can view it.

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